Explain the Infinite
by Cyndi
Summary: How rare and beautiful it truly is that we exist. (Autistic!13th Doctor, Whouffle, Thasmin)


Summary: How rare and beautiful it truly is that we exist. (Autistic!13th Doctor, Whouffle, Thasmin)

Note: My autistic!Doctor headcanon isn't staying contained to the 12th Doctor. My mind screamed for some kind of resolution or continuation for what I started with 12, so here you go, something inspired by Sleeping At Last's song, _Saturn_. This ties my Whouffaldi fics to the show's canon in a rather interesting way if you squint, and it takes you through some internal experiences of autism that don't always manifest outwardly to an observer.

 _ **TW: The Doctor eats a huge meal after the "previously" section and that may be triggering for people with binge eating disorders**_.

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Previously, in _Every Love Story_...

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" _All of our everything goes into everything else. We're energy! Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only transform. And look! All of time and space yet to be is right here! It'll be a universe made entirely of us! Our thoughts, our dreams, our love. Ohh...Clara, Clara, Clara, we almost destroyed the last universe we shared. Why not have a go at creating one? We can be born again if we want to- just like we were before. Imagine discovering each other again. And again, and again...making different choices and ending up here when it's all done._ "

" _How will we find each other, Doctor?_ "

" _Clara Oswald, when_ can't _I find you? The most amazing part of this whole situation...everything that happened before, everything you think you know was only the prologue. This is when the real story starts."_

" _Then let's make ours a good one. One question. How will we tell it?_ "

" _Every love story ever written will be our story, Clara. Stories are where memories go when they're forgotten. The writers won't know they're writing about us because they can't remember the beginning of time. Love stories are all they'll have._ "

" _Does that mean someone's writing about us right now?_ "

" _Hmm. I always wanted to be in a piece of fan fiction. Is this on the internet yet? Hello, reader!_ "

" _Do you act this absurd when you're alone?_ "

" _I'm nothing without an audience, Clara. Now, we best do this spinning. Otherwise nothing will and that's boring. Are you ready?_ "

" _Always, Doctor._ "

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 **Explain the Infinite**

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The Doctor sank her teeth into the buttery toasted bread and plunged beneath a sea of satisfying crunch and hot, salty, scrummy egg-cheese mush.

"Mmh! Oh, brilliant!" She closed her eyes in relief as she savored the first bite of her fourth fried egg sandwich.

Her mouth wasn't causing any issues this time. No gagging based on disagreeable mixed textures. No cringing because of overwhelming flavors. Conflicting smells didn't turn her stomach and handling something greasy wasn't eviscerating her appetite. Eating was enjoyable again instead of a necessary evil to distract herself through.

Manners flew out the window and she tore into the sandwich with rapturous gusto. Her conscious awareness funneled into the ambrosial symphony of smells, flavors and textures.

Regeneration played havoc on metabolisms. The Doctor's hadn't fully settled down yet, and her new body manifested the search for balance as raging, uncontrollable food cravings. Cravings that gave her much more sympathy for the Pting she encountered. Unfortunately, swallowing a high energy explosive wasn't a viable solution.

The effects of her search lay all over the white tabletop, which had a plate full of fried egg sandwiches, another with six pancakes doused in syrup, bacon and sausages piled on a nearby saucer, two juicy cheeseburgers atop a serving tray, a salad bowl topped in Thousand Islands dressing, a bowl of fruit, a tuna sandwich, two slices of plain cheese pizza served on a napkin, tater tots arranged in circles around ketchup, piping hot fish fingers by a bowl of custard and a huge piece of chocolate cake. Her currently untouched drinks were milk, orange juice, lemonade, plain ice water and a cup of steaming chamomile tea.

Breakfast (tasty danger), lunch (very important) and dinner (also very important) with dessert (never to be skipped) all at once. What rules dictated she wasn't supposed to eat them together? She had many rules, but that wasn't one of them!

The Doctor worked her way through everything she ordered. She took a bite of something else between fried egg sandwiches until she ate them all. Then she focused on the rest of her food. Sweet, salty, greasy, gooey, chewy, crunchy and mushy, she went at everything else like someone who never had a proper meal before in their life. She hardly looked at what she put in her mouth, so the only thing she spat out was the squishy fruit that got her chin wet.

Gagging, she paused to look at the not-nice food interloper.

A malodorous, supercilious _pear_.

Of all things, a _PEAR!_

"Really?" The Doctor scrunched up her face as if personally insulted and wiped the remaining juices off her tongue with a crumpled napkin. "You terrible little- nope! Absolutely _nope_. No pears allowed."

She hid the offensive green fruit under an unused napkin before hunger pulled her back into the fray.

The chocolate cake was the last victim of her ravenous appetite. Its delicious richness delighted her whole body like velvet caressing her taste buds. She gulped the milk, guzzled the orange juice, slammed back the lemonade, sipped the tea (after adding a lot of sugar) and washed it all down with the ice water.

Satiated at last, she licked her fingers clean, daintily wiped her mouth on a napkin and stacked her plates in a neat pile with the silverware at the top. A cluttered TARDIS console was one thing, a messy table when messes weren't productive might as well be nails on a chalkboard to her brain.

The Doctor scooted off the cushioned red booth seat and peered out at the blackness beyond the diner's glass doors. Orion hovered high in the southern sky where the Milky Way left a faint dusty trail pointing to intergalactic space. Stellar drift carried Orion's outer named stars- Betelgeuse, Meissa, Bellatrix, Rigel and Saiph- further apart, though everything else remained mostly the same. Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka, the constellation's three belt stars, shone like icy blue diamonds against the void. A white glow denoted Orion's northeast corner. Ever-red Betelgeuse had gone supernova recently (universally speaking). The explosion was bright enough to gleam through Earth's atmosphere during the day, and at night it superseded proud Rigel and upstaged the full moon. Below Orion's belt, the famous Orion nebula housed a spreading star cluster, a newborn stellar generation destined to become their own constellations.

Everything below the sky looked deserted. The amusement park across the street shut off its lights two hours ago, but nobody approached the diner. Then again, not many people visited diners at- she plugged her right nostril and sniffed- four o'clock in the morning in- she plugged the other nostril and inhaled- the year twenty thousand-eighteen.

Well, _that_ explained why Area 51 was a space-themed amusement park instead of a classified air force base.

Yawning, this body's way of saying its nutritional needs were met, the Doctor leaned backwards to stretch. Her view went from the black and white checkered floor to the decorative red and blue neon light tubes lining the tiled white ceiling above the bar counter. All the lights emitted a faint buzz, though it wasn't as bothersome as the almost unnatural quiet that turned her breath into tornadoes and sent every rustle of her coat into tenebrous echoes. Her ears latched onto any noise they could find- clocks ticking, electricity humming into the soda machine and her own two hearts beating away like champions.

This incarnation's autistic brain _hated_ things being too quiet. Not a totally unfamiliar arrangement. Her younger bow tie-loving self had the same problem, but it was such a contrast to the oversensitivity she just emerged from.

"Are you heading out?"

The Doctor blinked and straightened, her blonde hair swishing against her jaw. There stood the petite doe-eyed waitress wearing a cute short blue and white uniform dress. She was almost as tall as the coppery Statue of Liberty replica at her left. A painted image of Elvis Presley seemed to dance on the door behind her.

Both the Doctor's hearts squeezed in on themselves. She wasn't sure she could say the woman's name without sounding too familiar with her, so she avoided speaking it.

"Nah, I'm digesting. Um…"

The Doctor's voice trailed off when her gaze landed on something purple sitting atop the soda machine. A nebula-themed fidget cube adorned in black clicky buttons, flippy switches, a silver rolly thing and a few spinny things. Perfect for idle hands that needed something to occupy them.

She pointed to it, "Does that belong to anybody?"

"If it does, the owner never came back for it." The waitress waved a hand. "Take it if you want."

The Doctor picked up the tiny fidget cube, and her swirling mind said _ahhh_ at the vibrating crackle of pushing as many buttons as possible all at once.

"Thanks, I'll-" She looked up to see the Elvis door swinging shut, "-look at this, I suppose."

Shrugging, she studied the diaphanous nebula pattern decorating the cube like music for her eyes. That was the Veil nebula from Cygnus, she realized. She ensconced the cube in her fist and repeatedly pushed the loudest, clickiest button on the whole thing. A delightful shiver ran up her spine. Finally, a satisfying stim _and_ something to put in one of her many pockets. Win-win!

 _I could make this sonic_. She grinned at the floor and rocked her weight from her heels to her toes. _A sonic fidget cube sounds as cool as bow ties and fezzes. Ooh! Maybe I'll send Hanne a sonic white cane for Christmas!_

Her hands twitched up to her throat to tighten a bow tie that wasn't there. _Right, that was two bodies ago. Argh_.

The Elvis door cracked open only far enough for the waitress to slip through. She closed the door by leaning on it with her arms crossed and her face assumed a knowing smile.

"Do you miss the eyebrows?"

Such an oddball, out of context question. The Doctor almost saw it bounce off her skull like a deflected bullet. She cocked her head, baffled.

"Eyebrows? Sorry, what?"

"You know what I mean." The waitress arched a brow. "Doctor."

Oh!

 _Oh_.

Hearing her name sent a strange relief through her. Pretending to be a typical Earthling got tiring after awhile because she wasn't very good at it.

"Clara," whispered the Doctor. Her first time stating that name with a brand new voice and accent. It sounded beautiful. "How did you recognize me?"

Clara. Clara Oswin Oswald. Tiny, amaranthine and impossible.

"I suspected it when you started rattling off all the food you wanted." She smirked and swiped the napkin off the pear. "I _knew_ it was you when you looked offended by _that_."

The Doctor crinkled her nose and leaned away from the pear like it had the plague. "Pears are terrible."

They laughed after exchanging a knowing glance. The Doctor scampered over and scooped Clara up in a dizzying spin-hug, which roused a startled yelp.

As soon as they touched, the Doctor sensed nano-tears in the universe dangling off the end of Clara's timeline. Fixed points in time were terrible things- like somebody planted a pear right smack in the middle of a delicious cake. Earth had an obnoxious menagerie of them, their tangled frames the sole barriers between total space-time collapse.

Clara's timeline was forced in that direction because of what happened to Ashildr- or Me, as she called herself. Going back and undoing it wasn't possible. Erasing fixed points in time broke the universe, too. Rules existed for good reasons, but they sure felt awful.

Sobering, the Doctor eased Clara's feet back onto the floor. Realization crushed her as much as having to leave the Solitract plane behind.

"Your next stop is Gallifrey, isn't it? Please say it's not."

"I'm sorry, Doctor. It is." Clara looked up at her, brown eyes glistening. "I've just come from dropping Me off at the end of the universe. Now- you said to always make amends if I'm cruel, so I'm doing that."

The Doctor tucked a loose strand of hair behind Clara's ear. Eye contact rippled discomfort through her brain like someone turned a floodlight onto her optic nerves, but it wasn't intense enough to immediately repel her gaze.

"Oh, Clara, what kind of cruel thing have you done?"

Clara's warm, soft hand cupped her cheek. The gentle touch didn't scorch.

"I got reckless, and my death hurt you. It still hurts you. I can see it in your eyes."

A tight lump welled in the Doctor's throat. Her composed expression was a rickety foundation holding up a condemned building. She inhaled slowly through her nose as if bracing herself.

"I did this to you. If it's anyone's fault, it's mine."

Clara shook her head. "I wanted to be like you, and you made it possible. For a thousand bloody years, Doctor, I lived like you. It taught me why you need someone. Watching somebody see it for the first time reminds you of your first time all over again, doesn't it? You live vicariously through them. Then they leave, or they die, and it's like somebody turned off the lights. You fumble around in the dark until you find the next light switch. You know the light is going to go out on you again, you know it's going to hurt, but you keep flipping the switches anyway because the light is incredible while it lasts."

The Doctor stuffed her hand into her coat pocket and gripped the fidget cube. Its firm edges were a fortress compartmentalizing the ache expanding between her hearts. Her mouth rambled ahead before she clamped down on her thoughts, and the final paragraph of Colleen McCullough's _The Thorn Birds_ spilled out.

"'Let the cycle renew itself with unknown people. I did it all to myself, I have no one else to blame. And I cannot regret one single moment of it. The bird with the thorn in its breast, it follows an immutable law; it is driven by it knows not what to impale itself, and die singing. At the very instant the thorn enters there is no awareness in it of the dying to come; it simply sings and sings until there is not the life left to utter another note. But we, when we put the thorns in our breasts, we know. We understand. And still we do it. Still we do it.'"

Old Eyebrows had interesting ways of cropping up. The Doctor smiled self-consciously, which seemed like an odd thing to do while feeling incredibly sad.

She asked, "What was the last thing you and Me saw together? Er- Lady Me, I mean, not _me_ , me."

Clara's hand moved off her cheek to her shoulder. "I made a typo in a set of coordinates, and we ended up in a tiny, sentient universe-"

"The Solitract plane?"

"Is that what it's called?"

"On Gallifrey, yeah...I just came from that plane. Had to talk it into letting my friends go because it wanted us to stay. What happened to you there?"

Softness wisped Clara's expression. "It took the form of Danny and begged me to stay, too, but this TARDIS made it too unstable. Me convinced it to let us go. She said it was sad, and it was beautiful."

A realization snapped across the Doctor's mind. "That explains the portal in Norway."

"Norway?"

"Mmhmm! Your TARDIS left a hole when you crossed through the 'brane, and the universe created the Anti-zone to repair the breach. Just like a scab. That let the Solitract plane see and feel things from this universe after you left. Oh, Clara...that explains why it was so hungry for love. You told it about us, and it wanted to feel more of that."

"Yup. That's exactly what happened. I thought I was less predictable than that." She smiled a small, knowing smile. "Are you cross about it?"

"No." The Doctor relaxed her grip on the fidget cube and drew Clara close in a hug again. "Bringing love to a conscious being who never knew it before is one of the kindest things you can do."

"The Solitract isn't the only sentient universe." Clara rested her chin on the Doctor's shoulder, a soothing presence, and in a few words she explained the infinite. "This universe is the sum of us. We made it to be seen by our eyes, Doctor, to be seen and felt and experienced by everyone we meet in it. Our story isn't over until everything is, remember?"

Yes. The Doctor remembered.

 _Their waltz steps were smaller than subatomic particles carrying them in orbit around the luminous white sphere. Faster and faster they went, their forms becoming a colorful ring of energy as they spiraled together into the unknown_.

 _Expansion happened immediately. From a point too small to see to grapefruit sized in mere nanoseconds. Everything yet to be existed in a growing cosmic soup of hot particles set in motion by Clara and the Doctor_.

 _The spin from their waltz bound the first atoms_.

 _The light in his (at the time) eyes became galaxies_.

 _The sound of her laughter built the cosmic web_.

 _Then a little girl sat on a swing next to a sad man wearing a bow tie. She grew up and found him years later, and their love story began all over again_.

They told it through time and space, through poetry, books, songs, art and movies about love, through sunsets, nebulae, stars, dewdrops, people and existence itself.

All of that for this moment now, and it would soon be gone as surely as tock followed tick.

"I want you to move on, Doctor." Clara smiled sadly. "Is there someone you like now?"

It took the Doctor a moment to form words around the familiar face popping up in her mind. "I think so. Her name... her name is Yaz. She's a police officer with a mind like a firecracker."

"Good, then you're not alone." Clara drew back, bravely showing the Doctor her serious expression. "Take what we had and give it to Yaz. Don't wait around until it's too late. Give it to her. Give it to everybody who comes after me. You can do that, yeah?"

Once again, the ball of emotion expanded between the Doctor's hearts. The ache pressed upward, stinging her eyelids. She blinked to relieve it. "Yeah. I can."

Tears welled in Clara's eyes, too, but her time-looped lack of a heartbeat prevented the usual redness and puffiness that followed.

"I'll always be here, Doctor, but this is when we talked. Now that time is over." She leaned in, whispering, "Doctor, I let you go."

The Doctor cupped her hand on the back of Clara's neck and met her kiss in the middle. She pressed closer to the other woman's warm body, their thoughts merging like colliding galaxies, and suddenly she understood what came next.

"Clara Oswald," she said, trembling between lip locks, "I let you go."

They bumped foreheads, nuzzled noses and exchanged three light pecks. The old Wednesday Kiss, nostalgic and perfect.

The Doctor's tears escaped and did what their skin could not, and when they drew back she no longer knew if the droplets on her cheeks were her own, or Clara's, or a mix of both. She rubbed them in instead of wiping them off.

"That was hard."

"Yup." Clara swiped her fingers inward towards the center of her face. She, too, smoothed the tears into her skin.

Something nagging at the Doctor's memory blazed an epiphany behind her eyeballs. The force of it made her leap a half-step backwards and dig through her pockets.

"Oh. Oh! Now I get it! Oh, I'm so daft to not see this! I sent myself a clue to make sure all this happened!"

Clara went from sniffling to blinking. "Doctor? What are you on about?"

"One sec...just a- just a- aha! _There!_ " The Doctor produced a box of chalk and a rubbery black mushroom pendant attached to a clear key ring coil. She scrunched her face up as she stared at them like they answered all her questions. "I found my chalk and No Gloom 'Shroom in your pockets on the Trap street, but I never remembered giving them to you. Well, technically, I am right now, but I hadn't done it _yet_. Oh, Old Eyebrows was so confused and upset that he never solved that mystery."

Just like that, the sorrowful air dissolved. Sugar replaced bitterness. Clara covered her face and laughed. The Doctor crumbled with her. They clung to each other, guffawing until they were exhausted.

Time marched past the Doctor's skin. She felt the turn of the Earth underneath her and knew every whirling millimeter spun it closer to Clara's inevitable end.

Clara tucked the chalk and 'Shroom into her apron pocket. She looked up again, half-smiling, half-sad, a courage as ageless as the stars shining in her relucent brown eyes. "Run, you clever girl, and remember me."

"Oh, Clara, Clara, Clara..." The Doctor cupped Clara's soft cheek. "Love is a promise, and I promise that I always will."

They exchanged another long look. Memorizing each other, turning this moment into a perpetual latibule forever protected from the sweep of time.

Clara clasped the Doctor's hand between both of hers, brought it to her lips and tenderly kissed her knuckles.

"This is as brave as I know how to be." The Doctor made herself say the dreaded words, " _Goodbye_ , Clara."

A small, wordless smile was Clara's response. Such a strong woman.

The Doctor sighed, squaring her shoulders in a show of bravery before she marched out the glass doors. The lump in her throat expanded behind her eyes. She withstood the awful beauty of letting yesterday go and promised herself the euphoric hope of swinging into tomorrow.

Familiar TARDIS engines wheezed behind her. She watched the diner dematerialize, but didn't cover her mouth or close her eyes until air surged into the space it occupied.

Only the stars saw her kneel down in time's lacuna and cry.

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The Doctor eyed the weather in mild dismay. Rain roared against everything caught underneath it as if the sky wept. Petrichor wafted up in the mist forming near the ground. The smell told her she landed properly in the year twenty-eighteen, but really- she had to deal with _this?_

Sometimes the TARDIS did ridiculous things for her own amusement, and landing a kilometer from Yaz's Park Hill flat during a beastly midnight rainstorm was one of her latest gaffes.

Waiting for the rain to pass seemed both logical and practical. Stepping back inside and moving the TARDIS a few hours forward sounded like a perfect solution.

But this couldn't wait. It _shouldn't_ wait.

The Doctor hurled herself through the rainstorm at a speed that would make Usain Bolt faint in shock. Moving her body spread out the nervous energy building inside her, giving it a safe exit that didn't tangle her thoughts. Maybe it already slipped out and nipped at her heels, maybe that was why she stole a TARDIS and ran away in the first place.

Her feet carried her down a narrow side street. Bright white lights stabbed her eyes. A horn honked. She vaulted over the oncoming car and thud-hopped off its rear bumper without breaking her stride. The driver honked again, a far off echo already receding. She shirked fences and dumpsters the same way, by bouncing off her hands and swinging her legs over the other side without pausing to see who witnessed her epic parkour moves.

Each breath came ragged through her teeth, every puff counting the seconds. Tick, tock, inhale, exhale. Raindrops twinkled coldness on her exposed skin. Her brown boots splashed in puddles and dislodged loose pebbles. She appreciated how pretty the colorful city lights looked reflected on the glistening wet cement while speculating how much prettier the universe was in Yasmin Khan's bright brown eyes.

Red-faced, breathless, soaked and bedraggled with her hair a clumpy mop stuck to her face, the Doctor rapped on the door to Yaz's flat.

"Yaz!" She called between volleys of knocks.

A forever of a minute went by before the locks clicked and the door cracked a few centimeters.

"Doctor?"

Yaz pulled the door all the way open, blinking sleepily. Miraculously, she was alone. Her hair fell in rumpled waves behind her and she wrapped an enormous crocheted purple blanket over herself to cover her gray flannel pajamas. No makeup adorned her concerned, half-asleep face. Time stood still in her dark eyes.

She never looked more incredible.

"Are you okay? You look like you've been crying and running a kilometer in the rain."

The Doctor forgot how cold she felt and shivered uncontrollably, her sodden clothes dripping a puddle on the floor around her feet. She stuffed her hand into her frigid wet pocket to grasp her fidget cube as if steeling herself for a blow. Not once did she think about what to say upon arrival, and now the words she usually wove without a care fled like her breath.

"Y-Yeah, cried a bit and _totally_ ran a kilometer with some brilliant parkour thrown in, 'cause I was in a hurry. I have something really, really massive and important to explain to you right now, but I can't do it the usual way."

She exhaled after spitting everything out in a jumble. Both hearts thumped in her chest so much that she stepped forward and didn't realize she barged into Yaz's flat until she noticed less cold air biting her skin.

"Er...right. Come on in." Yaz arched a sculpted brow. "So what's the explanation, and how do you plan to say it?"

"W-Well, uh..." The Doctor worried her bottom lip between her teeth and wiped her ropey wet hair back, making it messier than it already was. "I'm telepathic, you see, but only if I touch the other person. Works different every time I regenerate, and, um..." She inhaled and said it, "...kissing seems to be it for this go around."

Now more awake, Yaz popped a hand out from under the blanket to scratch the back of her head and arched both eyebrows. She leaned closer, so new, fresh, alive and twinkling with wonder.

"So you have to snog me to read my mind?"

It sounded absurd when said out loud. The Doctor dug her drenched heels into the backs of her squishy boots, refusing to back down.

"No, I have to snog you so you'll hear _mine_."

Yaz's forehead relaxed to neutral. She grasped the Doctor's shoulder and inched closer, dark eyes limned in city lights- definitely prettier than scintillating reflections on wet cement. "And your explanation?"

Breathless, with a mind screaming to share its contents, the Doctor replied, "The inf-"

But Yaz- always the go-getter- grabbed her sodden coat lapels and yanked her closer. Reality swung forward when their mouths collided hotly in the crisp darkness, and a rhapsodic phantasmagoria slipped from one mind to another like velvet shockwaves. Everything the Doctor saw and experienced in this universe and the ones before- every person she traveled with and loved, every heartbreak and every new hope- laid itself out for Yaz, an avalanche of promise.

They drew back after a moment to catch their breath. Yaz's eyes welled up, her brimming tears a reflection of the paracosm living inside. A magical complexity, a universe made to be seen by and through her eyes. It was so alien, rare and beautiful against her human ephemerality.

Clara showed all that beauty to the Solitract plane, the Solitract plane helped the Doctor understand it, and now the Doctor brought it to Yasmin Khan. She knew it was another thorn being driven into her chest, but oh what a brilliant, superlative song it created!

The Doctor sniffed once and nervously pursed her lips. "I want to hug you right now, Yaz, but-" She shuddered, her teeth chattering, "-I'm proper soaked and you'll get wet, too."

"Don't care." Yaz unwrapped the blanket enough to drape half around the Doctor and pulled her closer to her warmth, her face illumed from within. She smiled, "Explain that to me again, but slower."

Heat suffused the Doctor's cold skin. The nervous shaking she mistook for shivering ceased immediately. Exigency stopped ruling her thoughts and space-time wasn't collapsing in five minutes. She could afford to slow down.

"Okay."

The Doctor embraced Yaz under the blanket and leaned in more slowly. Yaz tilted her head, her trusting eyes fluttering shut. Their lips met again, a nascent love emerging fully from its nebular shell, and through it they touched the infinite.


End file.
